Orion o-1

by Ben Bova

  Ye Liu Chutsai closed his eyes for a moment. It made his old, lined face look like a death’s mask in the flickering firelight.

  When he opened his eyes again, he said, “There is but one true civilization in the world, the civilization of the land that you call Cathay, or China. I am a son of the Chin, the Chinese. I serve the Mongol High Khan so that civilization may be extended to the four corners of the world.”

  I felt confused. “But the Mongols have conquered Cathay. Kubilai Khan rules in Yan-king now.”

  The old man smiled. “Yes, and already Kubilai — who was born in a felt yurt on the grasslands not far from this very spot — already he is more Chinese than Mongol. He wears silk robes and paints beautiful landscapes and deals with the intrigues of the court as delicately as any grandson of a mandarin.”

  His meaning became clear to me. I leaned back and drew in a deep breath of understanding. “The Mongols are the warriors, but the Chinese will be the true conquerors.”

  “Exactly,” said Ye Liu Chutsai. “The Mongols are the sword arm of the empire, but the civilization of the Chin is its brain.”

  Agla spoke up. “Then the Mongols are serving you, aren’t they?”

  “Oh no, by my sacred ancestors, no, not at all!” He seemed genuinely upset by such an idea. “We are all serving the High Khan, Ogotai. I am his slave — willingly.”

  “But only because the High Khan is paving the way for a Chinese empire that spans the world,” Agla insisted.

  Ye Liu Chutsai went silent again, and I realized that he was arranging his thoughts so that he could present them to us as clearly as possible.

  “Timujin,” he said softly, as if afraid someone would hear him use the revered name, “hit upon the idea of conquest as a means to keep the tribes of the Gobi from annihilating each other. It was a stroke of genius. But it requires that the Mongols constantly expand their empire.”

  “Yes, you told us that,” Agla said.

  “Of what use is all this bloodshed and misery, however?” the mandarin asked. “What purpose does it serve, other than keeping these nomadic warriors from each other’s throats?”

  Neither Agla nor I had an answer for that.

  “On the other hand,” he went on, “here is the civilization of the Chin, the highest civilization the world has ever seen. It is not warlike, so it has no way of spreading the fruits of its culture to other lands.”

  “The Mongols invade Cathay,” I took up, “but the Chinese civilization conquers them, eventually.”

  “It takes a generation or two,” Ye Liu Chutsai said, agreeing with me. “Sometimes longer.”

  “So your task is to keep the Mongol empire growing, so it won’t collapse, for a long enough time to allow it to evolve into a Chinese empire, ruled by civilized mandarins who will control the entire known world.”

  He nodded. “A single, unified empire that girdles the entire world, from sea to sea. Think of what that would mean! An end to war. An end to the bloodletting. A world of peace, ruled by law instead of the sword. It is the goal to which I have devoted my entire life.”

  A Chinese empire, carved out by Mongol warriors, ruled by silk-robed mandarins. Ye Liu Chutsai saw the highest civilization in history creating a world of peace. I saw a stifling autocracy that would stamp out individual freedom.

  “I share my vision with you,” the mandarin said, “because I want you to understand the problem you have raised for me.”

  “Problem?” I asked.

  He sighed. “Ogotai is not the man his father was. He is too amiable to be a good ruler, too content with the wealth he has today to understand the need to drive constantly onward.”

  “But you said…”

  “Fortunately,” he went on, stopping me with one upraised, slender, long-nailed finger, “the dynamics of the empire are still powerful. Hulagu, Subotai, Kubilai and the other Orkhons and princes along the periphery of the Mongol conquests still press onward. Ogotai stays here inKarakorum, content to let the others do the fighting while he enjoys the fruits of their conquests. It is not a healthy situation.”

  “But what has that to do with us?” Agla asked.

  “Ogotai is a superstitious man,” Ye Liu Chutsai answered. “And his soothsayers have been warning him, lately, to beware of a stranger from the West — because he will attempt to murder the High Khan.”

  I said firmly, “I too have a warning for him.”

  “You are from the West,” Ye Liu Chutsai said. “So is the one who calls himself Ahriman.”

  “He is here!” I blurted.

  “You know him?”

  “Yes. It is he whom I must warn Ogotai against.”

  The mandarin smiled vaguely. “Ahriman has already warned Ogotai against you, the fair-skinned man of great strength from beyond the western sea.”

  I sat there on the cushion, wondering where this would lead. My word against Ahriman’s. How could I convince…

  “There is something more,” Ye Liu Chutsai added. “Something that makes the problem acute.”

  “What is it?”

  “A threat to the empire has arisen.”

  “A threat?” I echoed.

  “What could possibly threaten an empire that has conquered half the world?” Agla asked.

  “Earlier today you used the word ‘assassin’ when you spoke to the guards.”

  “Yes, after those two men tried to kill me.”

  “ ‘Assassin’ is a new word here. It comes from the land of Persia, where a cult — perhaps it is religious, I do not yet know — has sprung up. It is a murder cult, and its members are called assassins. I am told the word stems from a Persian name for a drug these men use: hashish.”

  “I don’t understand what this has to do with me,” I said.

  “The man who directs this murder cult is as clever as a thousand devils. He recruits young men and promises them paradise if they follow his bidding. He gives them hashish, and no doubt other drugs as well, to show them a vision of the paradise that will be theirs after their mortal bodies perish. Small wonder that the youths are willing to give up their lives to do their master’s will.”

  “I know of these drugs,” Agla said. “They are so powerful that a man will do anything to have them.”

  Ye Liu Chutsai dipped his head once in acknowledgment. “The addicts are ordered to kill a man. Even though they know that they themselves will be killed as a result, they do so gladly, believing that they will awaken in an eternal paradise.”

  I said nothing, even though I knew that what appears to be death is not the end of existence.

  “In Persia, thousands of merchants, noblemen, even imams and princes have been… assassinated. The cult has merely to warn a man that he has been marked for death and so great is the terror that the man is willing to pay any price to placate the assassins. Thus the cult grows rich and powerful.”

  “In Persia,” I said. The land of Ahriman and Ormazd, and their ancient prophet Zoroaster.

  “It has grown far beyond Persia,” replied Ye Liu Chutsai. “All of Islam is gripped by the terror. And I fear that assassins have made their way here, to Karakorum, to kill the High Khan,”

  “Ahriman is from Persia,” I said.

  “So he freely admits. But he says that you are, too. Which you deny.”

  “Assassins nearly killed me today.”

  The mandarin made a small shrug. “That could have been a clever ruse, to put us off our guard. The two dead men were not Mongols, despite their garb. They could easily have been Persians. You may have killed them to keep suspicion away from yourself.”

  “But I did not. They tried to kill me.”

  The mandarin’s wrinkled face looked truly troubled. “I want to believe you, Orion. But I do not dare to act naïvely. I am convinced that either you or Ahriman is an assassin, perhaps even the very leader of the cult, the man known to the Persians only as the Old Man of the Mountains.”

  “How can I convince you…?”

  With a shake of his
head, Ye Liu Chutsai said, “In a problem such as this, the Mongols would act with wonderful simplicity. They would simply kill both you and Ahriman — and possibly you, too, my dear lady — and have done with it. I, with my civilized conscience, will endeavor to determine which of you is the assassin and which is the innocent party.”

  “Then I have nothing to fear,” I said, wishing that I actually felt that way.

  “Not from me. Not yet.” The mandarin hesitated, then added, “But Ogotai is not a patient man. He may apply the Mongol solution and be rid of the problem once and for all.”

  CHAPTER 15

  Agla and I were not exactly prisoners, but wherever we went in Karakorum, the same two Mongol warriors followed us. Ye Liu Chutsai said they were guards, for our protection, but they made me feel uneasy. Day and night they were never more than a few swift strides away. I learned that Mongol discipline was relentless: these men would guard us until they were ordered to stop. If we escaped their sight, they would be killed. If one of them died while guarding us, his son would take his place in such duty, if he had a son old enough to be a warrior. If not, his closest male relative would step in.

  We had the freedom of the city, except for the one place I wanted to go — the pavilion of the High Khan, the ordu of silk-draped tents that I could see from the door of our quarters each morning. Ye Liu Chutsai would not permit me to see the Khan or to come any closer to Ogotai than the edge of the wide cleared space that marked the ordu. The mandarin still worried that I might be an assassin, or even the leader of the entire cult of assassins. So I was kept from seeing the High Khan while Chinese court intrigues began to weave their way through the ordu of the Mongols.

  But there was nothing to prevent me from seeking out Ahriman. For days Agla and I wandered through the crowded, noisy lanes that meandered between yurts and buildings of stone and adobe, seeking the Dark One.Karakorum was a metropolis built by accident, without plan, without facilities. The Mongols saw it as merely another encampment, larger than any previous collection of yurts and carts that they had known. But they could not understand the differences that a change of scale makes. A nomad’s encampment of a thousand families with their tents and ponies and livestock could live beside a river for weeks on end before it had to move on. But a city of ten thousand families, or a hundred thousand, which remained fixed in one place, was beyond the ability of the Mongols.

  Sanitation was nonexistent. To these nomadic warriors and herdsmen, who rubbed animal fat on their bodies to protect themselves from winter’s cold, bathing was almost unheard of. Garbage and human wastes were simply dumped on the ground, usually behind one’s tent. Water was carried to the city on the backs of slaves, taken from the same river into which the runoff from the waste dumps ran. That system worked for a temporary camp, but for a permanent city it meant disease, inevitably. I began to wonder how long it would take for Karakorum to be swept away by an epidemic of typhus. Perhaps that was what eventually ended the Mongol empire.

  The noise of those twisting narrow streets rivaled twentieth-century Manhattan. Nobody spoke in tones lower than a shout. Ox-drawn carts creaked and groaned under heavy loads. Horsemen clattered by, scattering merchants, women, children and anyone else who happened to be in their way. It seldom rained, but when it did, thunder bursts poured torrents on the city. Almost every storm knocked down one flimsy adobe building or another, although the round felt yurts and the big tents of the ordu seemed to make it through the wind and rain better than the “permanent” buildings did. After each thunderstorm there were puddles everywhere, in which king-sized mosquitoes bred.

  No one I spoke to admitted to knowing of the Dark One. Ye Liu Chutsai had met Ahriman, and told me that he had even spoken with Ogotai before I had arrived in Karakorum. But the mandarin would give me no hint as to where to find Ahriman.

  So, day after day, Agla and I, trailed by our two faithful warrior guards, made our way through the bustling, noisy capital of the Mongols, shouldering and elbowing through the thick crowds, seeking one man in a city that must have numbered close to a million.

  I tried every church we could find, from the foul-smelling hut of some Christian hermits to the golden magnificence of a Buddhist temple.

  After nearly a week of searching, I finally saw what I had been looking for — a small, windowless, squat building made of gray stone, far off on the outskirts of the city, out near the corrals and barns where the stench of the animals and the droning buzz of the flies that lived off them were overpowering.

  Agla’s face showed her disgust at the surroundings. “There’s nothing here but filth and smell,” she said.

  “And Ahriman.” I pointed to the gray stone building.

  “There?”

  “I’m sure of it.” Turning to our guards, I asked, “What building is that?”

  They glanced at each other before shrugging their shoulders and pretending not to know. Perhaps they were under orders to keep me away from Ahriman. Perhaps they were afraid of entering the Dark One’s domain. No matter. I headed straight for the low, wide door — the only opening in the building that I could see.

  “That is not a good place to enter,” said one of our guards. It was the longest string of words I had ever heard him utter.

  “You can wait outside,” I said, without breaking stride.

  “Wait,” he said, hurrying to get in front of me.

  “I’m going in. Don’t try to stop me.”

  He was clearly unhappy with the idea, but equally unwilling to challenge me. He had been told what I had done to the two assassins. He sent his partner around to check on the building’s other entrances. There were none. Satisfied that he could watch the solitary door, he stepped aside.

  “You must call me if there is danger,” he said.

  Agla replied, “I will call, never fear.” But the warrior paid no attention to a woman.

  I had to duck to get through the low doorway. Inside, the chamber was dark, gloomy. Agla pressed against me.

  “I can’t see a thing,” she whispered.

  But I could. My eyesight adjusted to the darkness immediately, and even though the chamber remained shrouded in murky shadows, I could make out a stone altar on a slightly raised platform, with strange symbols carved on stone above it.

  “I’ve been expecting you,” Ahriman’s harsh, rasping voice rumbled.

  I turned toward the sound and saw him, a darker presence among the deepest shadows in the far corner of the chamber.

  “Come to me,” he said. “The girl will not be harmed; you can leave her there.”

  Agla seemed to have frozen into lifelessness. She stood stock-still, clutching my arms, staring ahead blindly into the darkness.

  “She will neither see nor hear anything,” Ahriman told me. “Leave her and come to me.”

  I disengaged my arm from Agla’s grasp. She was still warm and alive, but I could detect no breath in her, no heartbeat.

  “I have merely accelerated time for the two of us,” Ahriman said as I studied her. “This way we can talk without being overheard or interrupted.”

  I stepped across the stone floor toward him. The stones felt solid and real. Ahriman looked as I had remembered him — a dark, brooding, powerful hulking body and red burning eyes. Agla remained as lovely and as still as a statue made of living flesh.

  “When you return to her, she will not know that an instant has passed. And for her, no time will have elapsed.”

  “You play many tricks with time,” I said.

  He was standing straddle-legged, his huge fists planted on his hips. He wore fur-trimmed robes and high leather boots. I could see no weapons on him, but how paltry a sword or dagger would be to a man of his powers.

  “You travel through time quite easily yourself,” Ahriman hissed. “And through space. It was a long journey from Hulagu’s camp.”

  “You never rode in the camel caravan, did you?”

  His broad, brooding face almost smiled. “No. I took a different mode of t
ransport. I have been here in Karakorum for three months now. I am highly regarded as a priest of a new religion, a religion for warriors.”

  “You sent those two assassins.”

  “Yes,” he admitted easily. “I doubted that they would accomplish much, but I had to see if you still possessed the powers that you had the last time we met.”

  “At the fusion reactor.”

  His heavy brows knit in puzzlement for a moment. “Fusion rea…” Then he took in a deep breath. “Ah yes, of course. You are moving back toward The War. I haven’t reached that time yet.”

  We were traveling across time in different directions, I remembered. We had met before, and we would meet again.

  “Did you… kill me, then?” Ahriman’s labored voice almost sounded worried.

  “No,” I answered. “You killed me.”

  He seemed pleased. “Then I still may accomplish my task.”

  “To destroy the human race.” He glowered at me. “Human. Look at the wonders that these Mongols have achieved. Observe how they slaughter their own kind by the hundreds of thousands, and how others who believe themselves to be civilized applaud such slaughter and benefit from it. Human, indeed.”

  “Do you count yourself better because you plan to slaughter us by the billions?”

  “I plan to correct a mistake that was made fifty thousand years ago,” Ahriman rasped. “For every life that is snuffed out, a life will be gained. My people will live; yours will die. And so, too, will your creator die — the one who calls himself Ormazd.”

  “The War was fifty thousand years ago?”

  “You will learn,” he said. “You will meet me then. You will see. Why else would Ormazd have you moving back from The End toward The War? To keep the truth from you.”

  I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to keep his lies from penetrating my consciousness. I formed a mental image of Ormazd, shining, glowing against the darkness of eternity. The Golden One, the giver of life and truth. Ahriman called him my creator and said that he would kill us both.

  Opening my eyes, I said, “My mission is to kill you.”

  “I know. And I would happily kill you, as easily as you would crush an insect beneath your heel.”